Dist 3 plan meeting tops in turnout

The fourth and final public meeting to gain initial input for the update of Silver City’s comprehensive plan brought more people than any of the other three held during the last month.

During August, Community Development Director Jaime Embick, with support from town councilors, has been hosting the meetings, one for each district in the town.

More than 30 people showed up to the District 3 meeting at the Silco Theatre on Monday evening, and through an activity showed Councilor Jose Ray and Embick what they felt are the most important priorities in the community.

Following the format of the earlier meetings, those in attendance were given $203 in play money to “invest” into categories such as public facilities, land use, economic development, transportation, natural resources and housing.

In the District 3 session, citizens decided that public facilities were most important, giving $1,382 to the category, followed by land use at $1,319, economic development at $1,211, and $922 for transportation. Natural resources took up $716 and housing brought up the rear with $611.

In last week’s District 1 meeting, community members placed $1,090 into the economic development category, followed by $493 toward natural resources. Transportation came in at $433, while people only placed $189 in housing, $90 on public facilities and services, and $67 into land use.

At the earlier District 2 meeting, residents felt that public facilities and services were the most important things to improve upon, followed by economic development, transportation, land use, natural resources and then housing.

In District 4, residents prioritized natural resources as most important, followed by housing, public facilities and services, land use, economic development and then transportation.

Embick said she was pleased with Monday evening’s event, and emphasized that this round of public input meetings is just the beginning of writing the town’s comprehensive plan. Embick expects to have more meetings to highlight the most important issues brought forward in each district, beginning in October.

“I think the end product will be something that we can be really proud of,” she said.

Embick added that a town writing its own comprehensive plan is very rare, and she thinks going about the process in such a manner will truly get the feel of what the community wants, instead of outsourcing the work to a contractor from out of town.

“You can’t pay for that from a contractor,” she said. “You’re kind of at the beginning of a pilot project.”

Ray said Monday evening’s meeting really captured the beat of the community,

“We need it because it’s hard for four people to think for 10,000 people — so the more input we get, the better off we are, the better off everybody is,” Ray said.